Princess Michael of Kent Visits NEHGS, April 2015

We had the exceptional honor of beginning our 170th year with a celebration in Boston on April 14 featuring distinguished book author and member of the English royal family HRH Princess Michael of Kent. Princess Michael lives at Kensington Palace with her husband, HRH Prince Michael of Kent, first cousin of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

NEHGS President and CEO D. Brenton Simons presented a Lifetime Achievement Award in History and Biography
to Princess Michael for her outstanding achievement as a historian and author. Princess Michael discussed her recent book, The Queen of Four Kingdoms, as well as anecdotes and reflections from her many years of historical research and books that often feature her own ancestors.

Simons shared highlights from our research into Princess Michael’s distant American kinships, including George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “The Princess’s kinship to Franklin Roosevelt is especially fitting,” he said, “because FDR was a godfather to her husband, Prince Michael, who even has ‘Franklin’ as one of his middle names.”